Depressingly rich?

Norway as one of the richest countries in the world has a growing problem. We have an upwards statistic curve of suicides and depression, and it’s not hard to get to the place where you assume that this subject is getting pushed under the rug.

Statics show that over 80% of the people taking suicide visited their doctor in the year before they took their life, up to 66% did so in the last month of their life.
In the time between 1992 and 2001 the percentage of doctors referrals to depression clinics went up from 0,5% to 15% and still only 25-50% actually got any sort of treatment!

Why is it so hard for depressed people to get help in on of the richest countries in the world?

Another scary piece of fact about all of this is that the daily doses of antidepressants went up from 90 000 to 95 000 between 2009 and 2011. This was at the same time as the government released new guidelines for how to treat depression. It was clearly stated in these guidelines that antidepressant should be a last resort with patients that weren’t responding well to psychological treatment.
Somehow these numbers doesn’t add up. I refuse to believe that many depressed people has not responded to anything other than drugs.

While talking about this subject with friends over the holiday, one subject kept coming up. How the government refuses to use money on prevention of depression. Is depression being shoved under the rug because the government feels that there is nothing to gain on this case?

I asked for help with depression myself some years back. Went to my doctor and got a referral to a depression clinic. When I called them I almost fainted. They told me that there was AT LEAST a six to eight months waiting period before they MIGHT have had an opening for me.
I luckily got through it with help from close family and friends, but if that’s the answer one gets when building up the courage to actually ask for help, then is it so weird that some just give up? If you really ned the help and no one is there to here you cry for it other than a referral paper that means nothing for maybe a year, is it so surprising that the suicide rates are going up?

And the scariest question of them all might be this:
Has Norway gotten too rich and too proud to acknowledge that we have a growing problem that needs to be taken care of in other ways than with drugs?